But North Carolina is the exception. While some political observers have gleaned signs of Republican momentum in the overall Senate picture, the truth is little has changed since our first Senate forecast.

We currently peg the chance of a GOP takeover at 58 percent. Republicans have bounced around between a 53 percent and a 65 percent chance of winning back control.[…]

Democrats started to make a move around Sept. 10, when polling showed Hagan building support. You can also see a separate mini-spike for Democrats about a week later, when the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that Democrat Chad Taylor, who had dropped out of the Senate race there, could take his name off the ballot. That decision left a two-way race between Republican Sen. Pat Roberts and independent Greg Orman. That helped Orman, who is a 58 percent favorite. Indeed, Kansas is the only state besides North Carolina in which the Republican’s chance of winning has changed by more than 15 percent.

In the past few weeks, Republicans have gained back some of the ground they lost with the Hagan surge and the Taylor news.[…]

[…] There’s no Senate race in the country causing more trepidation among Republicans than North Carolina, where state House Speaker Thom Tillis is jeopardizing a GOP opportunity to upend first-term Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C.The repeated gripe against Tillis: He’s running an uninspiring campaign with dull, lifeless television ads that aren’t cutting through. “It’s too much of a run-of-the-mill Republican campaign that sounds like the candidate’s an accountant, instead of appealing to hearts and emotions,” says Gary Bauer, president of the conservative nonprofit, American Values. Bauer says he’s hearing a “tremendous amount of complaints” about Tillis’ “lack of edge” in confronting Hagan. It probably explains why Tillis’ latest 30-second spot screams “Danger” lettering on the screen, faulting Hagan for failing to recognize the emerging threat of the Islamic State group. But the challenger is running out of time to reverse the tide. The last eight public polls have all shown Hagan with a small, but consistent single-digit lead. […]

Mr. Flip Flop will change direction at the smell of cash like a shark smelling a drop of blood.

Uninspiring was a kind term.

He might have gotten a distance learning degree, but he ain’t ‘smarter than a fifth’ grader. A fifth grader would know that nobody (did I say NOBODY?) yes nobody except any politicians accepting graft want tholl roads. It’s just that simple. Everybody’s paying high gas taxes, and highway use tax, and the state can’t handle that money judiciously…why in the world would we want to pay any more? Ask a hundred people if they want toll roads, see how many stupid looks you get.

And even though some of us Republican supporters like some concepts, we don’t like the way you ruled your chamber. We don’t like to hear about bills not seeing the light of day, and motorcycle-vagina legislation, and monopolies, rigged board of governors votes, ad nauseum. Serve your constituents, not your country club and business cronies. Treat your fellow legislators right and with the respect they deserve. You know a few apologies might have even turned your campaign around, if any body would believe a word you say.

Have the decency to at least SHOW UP instead of duck and dodge forums and personal appearances. We know you go where the cash is, but the people are more important than a fast untraceable donation.

Hire some decent handlers, not Rove & Co. Hire a spokesperson who is believable when told to dish out pablum for excuses.

Deal with office affairs in a manner that doesn’t cost the taxpayers severance pay. If we are paying for sex, we would like to claim we enjoyed it.

That’s some of what went wrong. Now just look at all the money I saved you on exit polling.

Thoo Bad. Tholl Road Thom Thilli$ = Thoa$t.

Remember all those fellow Republicans you primaried, backstabbed and disrespected, now you are the victim. What goes around comes around.

Speech is speech and the founders understood correctly that curtailing speech for anyone will ultimately lead to restricting speech for everyone. A concept that many of today’s “brilliant legal scholars” seem remarkably unable to grasp.

The first amendment protections by the very language of the Constitution are against government censorship and are NOT restricted to ”people”. This is a very bogus argument that is easily shot down by simply reading the first amendment. Even JBP should be able to understand its simple language.

”Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”

There is NO mention of ”people”. Congress cannot trample the freedom of speech of people, corporations, or even talking parrots. You might note that the press, which is mentioned in the first amendment usually consists of newspapers and other media which is owned by corporations. Do you seriously mean to suggest that Congress can muzzle the press just because it is almost entirely owned by corporations? You and Joe Stalin seem to be soul mates.

Raphel,
Nice try by posting PART of the First Amendment. Here is the text of the FULL Amendment; “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
No “business” – “people” yes.

Nate Silver is a big liberal and a partisan Democrat hack who I normally wouldn’t trust any father than I could throw the Old Capitol building, but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then.

If we had just had a decent candidate with a competent campaign team, we would be well ahead of Hagan at this point. Instead, we have Tillis and Shumaker, a real pair of duds. I hope he does not do too much damage to the candidates farther down the ballot.

There is an old saying in politics that when you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything and that pretty much sums up Tillis. Hagan is vulnerable on some high profile issues, but the Tillis campaign does not seem to comprehend what an issue is and how to use it.

If I were running any Senate campaign right now, I would use the Ebola case in the US to build a call for tighter border security, not just against those who have been in Ebola stricken countries, but also against the flood of interlopers coming through our southern border.

So disappointing that we North Carolinians have such pathetic choices for Senator. These three illustrate how broken is our two party system. These three have not a patriotic bone in their bodies. They propose nothing, tax everything. NC is doomed to become another sanctuary welfare state.

ANY% 5-10-50-80% of a conservative beats 100% of a Democrat all day. You’ll have 6 yrs to get someone better, vetted, funded and polished by his re-election day. If not then don’t cry when we are overrun by Democrat policies that destroy whats left of the nation.

It would be par for the course for NC to be the state that messed this up..there isn’t any serious conservative movement in this state, only splinter groups with their own agenda.

Democrats do not have this problem they know how to win and they never stop, they never quit and they never shut up.

We can be picky next time, this one is for all of the marbles. Once he is in we can hammer him daily on what we want done while we dismantle the Chamber of Crony Capitalism machine.

Tholl Road Thom was simply not ready for prime time. You can be a big deal dealing with a whimpy NC legislature but that don’t mean much on the national stage. You can engineer a possum drop but that don’t mean much in DC. But Thom can take credit for making NC more blue than red. Was the preacher a plant in the primary? Was Tillis a plant by the Dems to insure Kay’s reelection? With the performance of the NC GOP do Republicans have any right to govern?